


Long & Lost (where I belong)

by The_Curious_Wonderer



Series: various tales in a twin Hawkes AU [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bethany is hard to write, Bethany!what are you doing!, Gen, hawke twins au, just so you know I've rewritten this story almost four times now, she wouldn't take no for an answer, thats why it took so long to get to you, this doesn't actually progress my storyline but Bethany swooped in and needed to be written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 17:11:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9081838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Curious_Wonderer/pseuds/The_Curious_Wonderer
Summary: There is too much to do. There is always so much to do.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story is super super late and I am so sorry!!! But if you appreciate me posting it you should definitely head over to stupid-fuqin-name.tumblr.com and tell them thank you! They spent over three hours talking to me last night and they are the reason I finished it!
> 
> Title from Florence + The Machine
> 
> Find me on tumblr @how-do-i-even-life

Bethany is no stranger to the Inquisition's couriers. She's been hearing from them since Garrett arrived at Skyhold and sent a letter promising to visit when he was done. At the time, she'd barely given a thought to when he'd be done with- it was Garrett, and he was with Varric. There were always problems in the world, and the two kindest souls she knew would never leave them unsolved.

But this one's face is somber, and she slinks off to a bed instead of the tavern once the letters are handed off.

Varric's handwriting spells her name and Carver's, and Bethany already knows.

(There is too much to do. There is always so much to do and she has not time nor energy to mourn when she has an entire town to look after. If she throws the unopened letter to Carver and listens to his breath catch in the next room, she doesn't act like it.)

((When she is six, she resigns herself to the idea that Carver is 'the strong one.' Carver, whose natural talent with a sword was better even than Marian's, who would carry her around on his shoulders, who never cried or sniffled, would look at her when they said things like that about pretty little Bethany, dainty sweet Bethany, and she would share the laughter in his eyes. They had, it felt sometimes, been born knowing that strength was more than the way your muscles moved and the feelings you chose to show.))

Marian's letter eventually follows up, etched desperately into the paper so hard that it has torn in a few small places. She hands this to Carver as well, and goes back to mediating a dispute between Bridgitte, one of her mages and Louverez, a trader from Kirkwall, over the price of a promised shipment of blood lotus and embrium. She can't take any time for herself, for her grief, for her siblings, for anything except the town she had built with magic and sweat and her own two hands.

Carver tells her over her quick supper that Garrett is lost in the fade, but Marian still thinks there's hope. Bethany nods along, but her mind is on the reports she had read earlier on the apprentices... attempts... at flame summoning. There wasn't any property damage, but none of them were catching on as well as the last two classes had, and that felt worrying. Carver shakes his head and smiles fondly, and slides her more steak and potatoes when he sees her plate emptying. 

(She remembered Lothering best, even though Kirkwall is more recent, because it's so much clearer in her mind. She can still hear the creek in the distance, her mother's chickens and the thought of fresh eggs, Sister Leliana's stories. Sometimes she remembers the exact stench that amassed in their last weeks there, as the blight encroached. She definitely remembers the final sight of their old farmhouse, roof and rafters and walls aflame as Garrett and Marian fought three hurlocks and Carver tugged herself and Mother further away.)

((Kirkwall is a blur in her memories, flashes of emotions and colors and smells that turn into a brown-grey-stone-dirt sculpture in her mind. She wishes it wasn't so fast, but she'd barely lived there, really, before the circle took her. And then she was in the thick of it.))

(((Sometimes, she thinks she remembers being held by her father when she is very small. She does not know if this is a dream.)))

There's another dispute the next day, another two the next, a worrying shortage on their fresh fruits that she'll have to look into herself and two more traders coming in next week that are new to the rules of Bethany's safe haven. She doesn't need anything more than that.

(In the circle, it went like this:

Bethany passed her Harrowing frighteningly quickly. The templars and senior mages watch her, evaluating. The apprentices and trainees watch her, terrified and awestruck. She carved the name Hawke into the circle and she doesn't have time to waste, though she doesn't know what she's preparing for. She half assumes she'll be busted out eventually by Marian, Carver helping, and Garrett shaking his head but guarding the doors.

Orsino takes her aside and offers her personal training. She says no. She has her own plans and they don't include being pegged as the runner up to the First Enchanter.

She branches out instead. She makes friends. The librarians, the stock room managers, the teachers she hadn't needed, the apprentices who look up to her. Pretty soon, she's sure she knows more of the circle's goings-ons than Orsino and Meredith combined.)

((She sends Aveline letters. Most run-aways, she can find and send back to Bethany before the templars even suspect someone's missing. Most of the true threats, she can warn of before it's far too late. Most of the time, she feels like she's actually doing enough.))

Carver is the one who meets the traders, and he's the one who is closest when Fenris walks into the town, head bowed and the etched lyrium almost glowing, seconds away from either murder or a breakdown, and Bethany can't tell which. So she drops him off in Carver's office- not hers, there's important documentation in hers- and leaves him until she can deal with him.

She doesn't actually see him again til two days have passed and Carver has been taking care of getting him settled. She meets him with a tea tray in his new room and she sits without invitation. It's what she's done since joining the complicated world of mages other than herself and her dear older brother- you act first, you don't blink, you never ask for permission. It is as much how she leads here as it is how she survived there.

"I'm sure you've received all the letters that we have," She premises, "so I won't ask why you're here or how you're doing. But I can't have a mouth to feed that doesn't work. So you can help in the fields, in house repairs, in magical research, I don't care. But you will work or you will leave."

"You're awfully callous for a woman whose brother has just died," he rasps, and Beth almost feels pity. 

"You must be stupid, if you believe he's actually dead. After all the time you've known him, known Marian, and you think that staying gone is even an option for him?"

Fenris coughs on his tea, and Bethany smirks. "I had never taken you for a fool until this day, Fenris. But if you'll excuse me, I have a town to run."

((Carver joined the templars to protect her and to find himself, and he only really accomplished one of those. She's so much harder, so much more than she was back then.))

Fenris slinks off in the morning, headed west, though Bethany doubts he makes it to Adamant or even Skyhold before Garrett has been tugged gasping and worrying into the land of the living. The Fade always did disagree with him. Or maybe over-agree with him.

Carver warns her that he'll be heading into Kirkwall in the next week or so, to recruit more traders and to check in with Aveline and Merrill. He only blushes a little at the second name, which is a far cry from the spluttering tomato he had been the first time he tried to justify going to see her. Bethany grins in response, flicks his ear and watches him scowl before forging her signature on the paperwork that would leave someone else in charge of the guard while he was away.

(There is such a freedom in being the ones these people think of when they say 'Hawke.' Sometimes she wishes she wanted to leave so she could be bitter about the shadow her sister cast over the rest of the world, but here it is quiet. Here, she knows everything she needs to and only gets stared at when there's a new argument they want her to solve or a problem to fix. It is calm and the worst life she has ever lived but she knows that she will never leave it.)

She picks up the reports as Agatha walks in, talking to Carver about a minor issue with lyrium for the older templars living here, the ones to weak to survive weaning off it. 

A barn caught fire but was immediately doused with no damage in the apprentices' flame summoning. After that, the students had been very eager to relearn proper casting. The subject was completed, with flying colors from all.

Louverez and Bridgitte had worked out the blood lotus, but the embrium shipment wasn't going to be decided until next trading trip, leaving them short until then.

"Tell Bodahn and Sandal to visit when you see them in the city," She interrupts the conversation. "And tell them to bring another shipment of embrium."

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a kudos or a comment, especially if there's a particular character you might like to see in these stories!


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